GOGITIDZE AND OTHERS v. GEORGIA JUDGMENT 19 country from the region being Armenia (32nd) and average regional rank of 73. Georgia was the top improving country since 2005 both in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia and globally with 35 institutional and regulatory reforms carried out.” THE LAW I. THE GOVERNMENT’S PRELIMINARY OBJECTION 74. After notice of the present application had been given to the Government on 9 November 2009, the Court was informed on 22 June 2010 for the first time that the third applicant, Mr Tengiz Gogitidze, had died on 7 May 2005 (see paragraphs 4 and 5 above). Referring to the above fact, the Government raised an objection of abuse of the right of petition in respect of the deceased applicant. They claimed that the applicants’ legal counsel had deliberately concealed from the Court the fact of that person’s death when deceitfully submitting the application form on the deceased person’s behalf. 75. The applicants did not comment on the Government’s objection. 76. The Court reiterates that an application may be rejected as abusive under Article 35 § 3 of the Convention if it was knowingly based on untrue facts (see, among other authorities, Akdivar and Others v. Turkey, 16 September 1996, §§ 53-54, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1996-IV, and Keretchashvili v. Georgia (dec.), no. 5667/02, 2 May 2006) or if incomplete and therefore misleading information was submitted to the Court (see Bekauri v. Georgia (preliminary objection), no. 14102/02, §§ 21 and 24, 10 April 2012, and Hüttner v. Germany (dec.), no. 23130/04, 9 June 2006). 77. In this connection the Court observes that whilst Mr Tengiz Gogitidze died on 7 May 2005, a fact confirmed by a death certificate added to the case file after communication of the application, legal counsel lodged the application on behalf of the deceased on 4 July 2005. Indeed, the application form presented Mr Gogitidze as an applicant with full legal capacity, living at that time in Moscow, Russia. Furthermore, on 2 November 2005 legal counsel submitted to the Court an authority form which mentioned that it had been issued and signed by the third applicant in Moscow on 22 October 2005. 78. In such circumstances, the Court considers that the application form was based on the false claim that Mr Gogitidze was alive and willing to lodge an application with the Court, whilst the authority form added to the file on 2 November 2005 and bearing the signature “Tengiz Gogitidze” was necessarily a forged document. Although it is unclear who exactly sought to deceive the Court and falsified the signature on the authority form, and there is no indication that legal counsel was aware of the fraud at the time of the